KEY POINTS:
RABAT - Twelve people, most of them French, were killed in Morocco when a tourist coach collided head-on with an articulated truck.
Twenty-four people were injured in the accident, which occurred on Sunday afternoon near the village of Benguerir in western Morocco on the main road between Casablanca and Marrakesh, the Moroccan MAP news agency said.
MAP said eight of those killed were French, while French travel agency FRAM, which organised the bus journey, said in a news conference in Toulouse that seven French people and one Swede were killed. The remaining four dead were Moroccan.
The injured were taken to the military hospital in Marrakesh.
"The wheels were wet," Marie-Christine Chauvet, the head of FRAM, told reporters, adding: "The bus was equipped with seatbelts, though wearing them is not compulsory in Morocco."
King Mohammed sent his condolences to the victims' families, the agency said.
It said he had decided to pay hospital expenses for the injured, the costs of returning "the remains of the dead of foreign origin" and burial costs of the Moroccan victims.
- REUTERS
